The present invention relates to communication systems, and in particular to the integration of computer email and telephony systems.
Modern office systems are equipped with two main forms of communications, namely the telephone and computer email. The telephone provides for real-time direct human-to-human contact, whilst email provides indirect contact in elapsed time. Thus email is a less spontaneous and perhaps more cumbersome interface than the telephone, but it avoids the need for the simultaneous availability of both parties and provides a readily stored record of the message exchange. Both telephony and email therefore have their relative strengths and weaknesses, and so can be used in complementary fashion, depending on the communication needs of a particular situation.
Of course, in recent years telephone networks and computer networks have developed significantly to offer many more facilities; for example, telephone networks can be used to FAX documents, whilst it is possible to embed audio data files in multimedia email messages. It is now also possible to use computer networks such as the Internet to provide very cost-effective audio connections, so-called Internet telephony (see for example the article xe2x80x9cDial 1-800-Internetxe2x80x9d in Byte Magazine, February 1996, p83-88, and the article xe2x80x9cNattering Onxe2x80x9d, in New Scientist, Mar. 2, 1996, p38-40).
Despite the increasing impact of Internet telephony however, the heavy usage of conventional telephony is unlikely to reduce much in the foreseeable future. This is due to the vast investment which has already been made in the infrastructure of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to provide simple, reliable, and ubiquitous communications, combined with the availability of increasingly complex services on top of the PSTN such as voice mail, conferencing, etc. Note that many business locations also have sophisticated telephony switches or private branch exchanges (PBXs) which support more advanced features, such as callback requests, call forwarding, and so on.
There have previously been attempts to integrate telephony and computer services. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,333,266 describes a unified messaging system which allows a user to access both their email and their telephone voice messages from a computer system. Typically in the latter case the voice message might either be transmitted to the computer system as an audio file, or the user""s telephone can be controlled to provide a call into the voice messaging system.
It is also known in specialized environments such as call centers to coordinate operations of the telephone and desktop computer of a customer agent. For example, the Callpath family of products available from IBM allows information about an incoming call (eg the calling or called number), which is passed into the call centre switch by the PSTN, to be sent to the desktop computer of an agent at the same time as the call itself is directed to the extension of that agent (see for example the manual IBM CallPath Call coordinator for OS/2 and Windows, reference number GC22-0074-02, 3rd edition 1994).
Call centers are also being developed to take account of the increasing prominence of the Internet and more particularly the World Wide Web as a customer interface. Thus EP-A-740445 describes a Web server from which a customer can access various pages over the Internet using a browser in known fashion. A xe2x80x9cCall Mexe2x80x9d button is provided for inclusion in a Web page. Responsive to the customer selecting this button, they are presented with an html form (xe2x80x9chtmlxe2x80x9d=hypertext markup language), into which they can enter their phone number and desired callback time. This form is then returned to the Web server, which extracts the call information and passes an appropriate call request to an Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) system, which in turn then places the desired call to the customer over the conventional telephone network.
An extension of this approach is the xe2x80x9cInternet Voice Buttonxe2x80x9d described at http://www.nortel.com/pcn/voicebutton, which allows a customer to select between receiving a call over the conventional telephone network, or instead over the Internet. Note that technically this latter option is actually the somewhat simpler of the two options, given that both the Web page and the audio data are being transferred over the same network using the same protocol (TCP/IP).
Another somewhat similar system is described in a White Paper by Lucent Technologies entitled xe2x80x9cInternet Call Centrexe2x80x9d and dated Dec. 15, 1997. As described in this document a Web Server can download a Java call control applet to start an Internet telephone call on the customer""s machine into the call centre. Note that a server in the call centre acts as an interface between the Internet and the call centre telephony system, so that the call centre agents in fact use their conventional telephone extensions (rather than Internet telephones).
In view of the above art, it will be seen therefore that much of the focus on computer telephony coordination has centered around relatively specialized applications, such as Web access to call centers. There has been comparatively little attention paid to the possibility of a broader and more flexible integration. Consequently most people still regard their telephone and their desktop computer in a typical office environment as providing essentially independent methods of communication.
Accordingly, the invention provides a method of integrating computer and telephony messaging comprising the steps of:
creating an email message on a first computer system, said step of creating the email message including the step of embedding within said email message an applet for performing a telephony function;
transmitting said email message to a second computer system;
opening said email message on said second computer system, said step of opening said email message including the step of launching said applet;
and performing the telephony function of the applet.
Thus telephony functionality can now be effectively embedded into an email message, so that the two primary forms of office communication, namely email and the telephone, can be utilized in a far more integrated and effective manner than has hitherto been possible.
In order to support the telephony function of the applet, the applet may access local telephony software on the second computer system, or possibly telephony software associated with the first computer system (ie the telephony server local to the first computer system). In the latter case, there are security implications, and the method preferably further comprises the step of authenticating that the applet originated from the first computer, prior to the applet accessing telephony software on the first computer system. This can be achieved for example by a use of a digital signature, so that the receiving system can confirm the applet as xe2x80x9ctrustedxe2x80x9d, thereby enabling it to perform a wider range of activities than would otherwise be permitted.
In the preferred embodiment, the applet accesses said telephony software on the first or second computer system via a standard interface. This ensures platform independence of the approach described herein, which is important given that by its very nature email may be directed to a wide range of receiving systems. The preferred standard interface is the Java telephone interface (JTAPI). An additional benefit of JTAPI is that it allows a wide range of configurations of the underlying telephony support software, for example encompassing setting up the telephony connection from the either first or second computer system as discussed above.
Typical examples of the application of the present invention are for the telephony function of said applet to set up a telephone connection between the sender and recipient of the email message, thereby effectively functioning as a call-back, or to connect the recipient of the email message to a conference call. Generally this functionality is offered to the recipient of the email message via one or more control buttons, whereby activation of the relevant button(s) causes the applet to form the requested telephone connection.
The invention further provides an email system including:
means for creating an email message;
means for embedding within said email message an applet for performing a telephony function; and
means for transmitting said email message.
The invention further provides an email system including:
means for receiving an email message;
means for launching an applet for performing a telephony function contained within said email message; and
means responsive to said applet for implementing said telephony function.
The invention further provides an email system including:
means for creating and transmitting email messages;
means for receiving email messages;
means for embedding within said email messages for transmission an applet for performing a telephony function;
means for launching an applet for performing a telephony function contained within a received email message; and
means responsive to said launched applet for implementing said telephony function.
The email systems are typically implemented using computer program products, which are provided to customers either on a computer readable optical or magnetic storage medium or via some form of computer network, for installation on their computer systems.
The invention further provides a method of integrating computer and telephony messaging comprising the steps of:
creating an email message on a first computer system, said step of creating the email message including the step of embedding within said email message an executable component for performing a telephony function;
transmitting said email message to a second computer system;
opening said email message on said second computer system, said step of opening said email message including the step of launching said executable component;
and performing the telephony function of the executable component.
The above functionality can also be supplied as a computer program product, for example as program code encoded on a computer readable medium such as a floppy disk, CD ROM, tape, and so on, or alternatively as program code made available for download over a network.